A Useful Warning

Digby reminds us that dismissing the Republican call to abandon the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment is exactly how they plan to get it changed in the long-term.

As Allison Kilkenny points out here, this is mostly a move to appease the base and to move the goalposts on immigration to give the Democrats room to find "common ground" on conservative terms, hence her title "let's just agree that Mexicans shouldn't be publicly executed." It's how they roll. But after listening to Istook, I was carried back to a time when I was younger and I used to hear conservative kooks out there parsing the Second Amendment to create an inalienable right to bear arms out of an archaic phrase obviously intended to make it possible to muster a militia. We know where that went. Istook's argument didn't seem to be ridiculous on its face and once people hear it enough times many of them will see it as good old common sense.

It's never a good idea to underestimate people's willingness to deprive others of things they take for granted themselves. I think this is dangerous for both the reasons Kilkenny stated and on the merits of the amendment itself. If they can't pass it now, I could easily see this becoming a long term cause that could find its way through the now thoroughly conservative federal legal system over the next couple of decades.

Just like abortion, gay marriage, and all the other "we need a Constitutional amendment to prevent X" issues, they eventually get traction and conservatives find a way to push limiting the action they don't like.

That's the long-term difference between liberals and conservatives.  Liberals look towards equality and expanding rights for all people, conservatives have the long-term goal of limiting rights to only people they approve of.  When times are tough, the conservative message looks better and better to the American who is increasingly losing their own future.

In the end, we have tremendous trouble overcoming our own self-preservation instincts.  Liberalism is risky by default and definition it deals with loftier concepts.  But the economy is magnifying the necessities; it's hard to deal with the forest when the tree you're living is is burning down, and why Obama and the Dems feel a increasing need to do nothing to help, I couldn't tell you.

Other than American politicians are always more conservative than they look.